ICYMI: A weekend of outrage and denunciation from the campaign trail

So, it’s week two of the never-ending election campaign (at least that’s what it’s beginning to feel like) and the rhetoric is increasingly hyperbolic. Here for your edification – and to prepare you for more to come over the next nine weeks – is some of the evidence from this past weekend.

It’s getting hot out there … and we’re not referring to the weather

* Harper uses security issues to distract voters from economy, Trudeau says. Liberal party leader Justin Trudeau says Stephen Harper’s latest anti-terrorism announcement is an attempt to distract voters from the Conservatives’ failed economic plan. During a 15-minute campaign stop in Ottawa on Sunday afternoon, the Liberal leader focused on the economy and took reporters’ questions about Harper’s proposal earlier in the day to ban travel to areas controlled by terrorists. Speaking at the Ukrainian Banquet Hall packed with Liberal supporters in the Ottawa West-Nepean riding, Trudeau focused on economic issues and empowering the middle-class, accusing both Harper and NDP leader Thomas Mulcair of “peddling false hope to hardworking people.”

* ‘Not my words’: Harper maintains he did not know about $90,000 payment to Mike Duffy as trial set to resume. Prime Minister Stephen Harper says the three words from the Mike Duffy scandal that have hung over him – “good to go” – were not his. Those three words are likely to be repeated in the coming days as Duffy’s trial returns to an Ottawa courtroom, with Harper’s former chief of staff Nigel Wright a key witness scheduled to testify this week. It was Wright who wrote those words in an email to fellow staffers in the Prime Minister’s Office on Feb. 22, 2013, when the discussion in Harper’s office was about using Conservative party funds to cover Duffy’s questionable housing claims. The email chain, outlined in RCMP court documents, show Wright wanted to speak with Harper “before everything is considered final.” Then the notorious words that the opposition has used to repeatedly try to link Harper to the Duffy affair: “We are good to go from the PM.” On Sunday, however, during a campaign event in Ottawa, Harper, when asked about the Duffy affair, said: “The words you’re quoting are not my words. They’re somebody else’s.”

* Stephen Harper vows to make it illegal for Canadians to travel to terrorist hotspots. Canadians have no right to travel to regions of the world controlled by terrorist groups, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Sunday in promising a broader legal crackdown on what he called “terror tourism.” The policy promise, made during a campaign stop Sunday in Ottawa, would expand federal laws that make it a crime for Canadians to head overseas to fight alongside groups officially identified by the federal government as a terrorist organization. “There is absolutely no right in this country to travel to an area under the governance of terrorists. That is not a human right,” Harper said. “We’re not under any illusion here what just about everybody going to an area like that is doing. That’s the reason to pursue this particular policy that’s been used in other countries.”

* Federal prosecutor fired for seeking NDP nomination without permission. Federal prosecutor Emilie Taman has been fired for abandoning her job when she took an unauthorized leave to seek the NDP nomination in the riding of Ottawa-Vanier for the federal election. Taman, a prosecutor with the Public Prosecution Service of Canada, confirmed she had received a long-expected termination notice last week — a month after she handed over her files and took a leave to run for the NDP nomination despite the objections of the watchdog overseeing the neutrality of the public service. Taman has been braced for a firing or suspension since she openly defied a Public Service Commission ruling that denied her permission to seek the nomination. However, Taman also said she plans to file a grievance to fight her dismissal. The Association of Justice Counsel, which represents federal lawyers, had earlier promised to fight any attempts to discipline or fire Taman.

* Liberals fire back at Jason Kenney’s comments on Justin Trudeau Jason. Kenney says Albertans have not forgotten the disastrous national energy program of the 1980s and says Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau’s policies are just as bad as his father’s. Alberta’s senior Conservative cabinet minister says the NEP caused thousands of Albertans to lose their livelihoods and their homes when it was brought in by former prime minister Pierre Trudeau. “I frankly don’t see much difference between Pierre Trudeau’s policies and Justin Trudeau’s arrogant, anti-Alberta attitude that he’s expressed more than once,” he said. Kenney pointed to 2010 French-language interview in which Trudeau said Canada isn’t doing well because it’s Albertans who control both the community and socio-democratic agenda. Trudeau apologized from those comments when they surfaced in 2012.

* NDP candidate under fire for saying ‘oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground’ to meet climate change targets. Linda McQuaig, a well-known author and the NDP candidate for the riding of Toronto Centre, told a CBC television panel discussion on Friday that for Canada to meet its climate change targets, “a lot of the oilsands oil may have to stay in the ground.” The comments contrasted with NDP leader Tom Mulcair’s past comments on Alberta’s oilsands. Mulcair has been open to oilsands development provided there is rigorous environmental protection and legislation to force oil companies to pay for pollution they create, including increased greenhouse gas emissions. He has favoured the development of an east-west pipeline. Calgary Conservative Michelle Rempel, who was on the same panel, challenged McQuaig and said constituents were bringing it up while she was campaigning on Saturday. “It came up at the doors three times without me even saying anything about it: ’I saw you on TV last night. Thank you for standing up for the energy industry, what that woman said is very concerning,’ so people are very concerned and rightly so about economic stability,” Rempel said.

The ghost in the Conservative campaign machine

* Michael Den Tandt: Harper pandering with plan to make it illegal to travel to terror-stricken zones. Until Sunday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives had a sure grip on the anti-terrorist file by virtue of a policy to fight violent Islamist zealotry that is both tailored to the country’s military means and supported by most Canadians. Given the cruelty and barbarism of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, on display daily, the opposition arguments against our modest contribution to the war effort in Iraq and Syria have had little political traction. But then, as is its wont, the Conservative party took a posture that had appeared more-or-less reasonable, and torqued it for sensational effect into something entirely different, which will and should alarm principled conservatives and civil libertarians alike. Should the Tories be re-elected in October, the prime minister announced, they will make it a crime for Canadians to travel to as-yet undesignated “declared areas,” where terrorism is judged to be rife. The stated objective is to dissuade home-grown, wannabe Islamist Jihadists from travelling from, say, Montreal or Toronto, to, say, Aleppo, Syria, there to join ISIL and make war on the local population, Canada and her allies, and afterwards potentially return to this country to stage attacks like the one that terrorized Ottawa last Oct. 22.

David Reevely: The Nigel Wright mystery: Duffy trial’s star witness could finally shed light on some key questions. Nigel Wright has been a star of Canada’s corporate and political worlds. He will be remembered for his turn as a star witness. That is what he’ll be on Wednesday, as suspended senator Mike Duffy’s criminal trial resumes. Wright, the millionaire private-equity player who has been the right hand of a corporate giant and a prime minister, is to testify about the infamous $90,000 payment to the broadcaster-turned politician that the Crown alleges was a bribe, a breach of the public trust, a fraud on the government — and part of an attempt to make a spreading scandal infecting Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government go away. For the trial, the central question is whose idea it was for Wright to give Duffy that bank draft. Beyond the court case, the question is what Harper knew and when.

“We’re not stupid.” So why do the politicians treat us that way?

John Boyko: 10 rules for a campaign worthy of Canadians. In TV’s political drama West Wing, C.J. once bemoaned a trivial incident being reported as news and said, “Everybody’s stupid in an election year.” Charlie replied, “No, everybody gets treated stupid in an election year.” With the campaign now gathering steam, sadly, it appears that C.J. was correct. But there remains time to change. Canadians can enjoy the campaign they deserve if party leaders obeyed certain rules, including, perhaps most importantly: 1) Don’t call us voters or taxpayers. We are citizens. Citizenship is a profound concept that informs our collective identity, individual rights, and responsibilities to others. Don’t cheapen citizenship’s nobility by confusing it with voting and paying taxes. They are merely two of its duties …

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